22 March — slavery is declared illegal in England.
13 July — English navigator James Cook began the first-ever circumnavigation of the globe from west to east.
5 August — the First Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth took place between Russia, Prussia, and Austria.
28 October — the Battle of Patras, a naval battle that took place on 26–29 October (6–9 November, New Style) during the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–74 in the Gulf of Patras off the coast of Greece. In this battle, the squadron of Mikhail Timofeyevich Konyaev of the Russian Navy’s First Archipelago Expedition routed the Turkish “Dulcignote” squadron.